New Land

Monday, January 8, 2007

It’s a bit of a shock to the system today… we have a day off… A day where the only thing really that we’re supposed to be doing is having some orientation from the head missionary here in Ulan Ude, John Wicker. They met us on the train when we arrived a couple days ago. John, Sharron, his wife and his children, Heather-Ann, Matthew and Heidi. Another couple in this area is Leif and Jamie Gustafson. They have been getting us to where we need to be and filling us in on the quirks of this area. Here the population is half Buryat.(boor-ee-at) They remind me so much of the Native People of Canada. Lol, and some even laugh exactly the same! They have fun games and jokes, love to walk and to hike. It’s really great being here. Yesterday we did a program for the local church here. It’s very small, but we sure filled it!

We did a full program set up in an area about 8’x6’… wow… that was a squeeze. That morning I was very sick… blah… But as the day went on I felt a lot better. After the service I met another Sasha who played guitar and Bryce went on to teach him some new chords. This was when we met Elizabeth . She’s a SEND missionary from Germany . She’s doing our registration stuff today if she can. Apparently she’s a master at getting out of problems. John said that she can get off with a warning from police if they catch her going the wrong way down a one way street, and run into a police car when she doesn’t have her license… she says, ‘I’m sorry, I’ll never do it again…’ and they let her off…(I doubt that ever really happened…but I do hear that most things that she gets off with, John always gets in trouble for…but that’s how the law works here sometimes)

Last night after the church meeting, we went to a service in the home of Shannon . She’s the equivalent of Olga if she had been born in the US . But now that I’ve met her…she reminds me a little more of someone else… hmm… Anyways, she was very excited to have us there and so we did little bits of program material and I helped play background guitar for their Christmas songs in Russian… That was fun. ^_^ Apparently we’ll see more of those youth in the next little while. Almost all of them were Buryat. Come to think of it, even the lady who comes in here to cook for lunch and supper is Buryat.

It’s different here. There’s more Chinese influence here. In fact, there’s even a Chinese restaurant on the end of our block… that was surprising.

I’m still very uncertain of what we will all be doing here in the next little while despite our schedule. What I mean is, it’s a little different trying to think of what to expect here. Elsewhere we’ve been in Russia , people have not been very ‘spiritual’…but here, it seems there’s a lot influence from Buddhism and other religions. Pray that God would break down the strongholds and that these people who are truly searching… the ones who are tired of life will hear about the Creator. Jesus.

We’ll see what happens.

Thank you to everyone who is praying…we had a problem free time getting here and God has kept us safe.

We played a couple games last night that were a lot of fun… electricity (you have two lines of people who hold hands behind their backs… on one end is a bottle… on the other a guy with a coin. When he flips the coin and it was heads, the person standing there watching would squeeze the hand of the person next to them… eventually the hand squeezing gets to the end and the person at the very end grabs the bottle. If they get it, then the team rotates one member to the other side. To win, you have to get back to where you started….) That was fun… other was this hand tapping game where you sit in a circle and have you hand on the knees of the people on you left and right. When someone taps their hand, you have to keep tapping and go around the circle. The trick is that if you double tap, then the direction changes… and if you flinch to move your hand, then that hand is out. Eventually you get down to two people… I actually won that game with both my hands still good… that plain shocked me… lol. While I was there I figured out a way to say something is really great….’Superr Ochin Herrisho’…which means (Very, Very Well) As far as Russian goes… it’s being very redundant… like if you were to ask someone if they would like butter for buttering your buttered toast…same kind of deal… Anyways, it’s truly a treat to add some Crazy Canadian to the Russians here who for many of them haven’t felt free in nearly ever. It really is something else to see them laugh. It’s fresh…and it’s new to many of them… I think it’s because it’s fueled by a deeper joy…

I love you all! Thank you for your prayers!

Keep your focus on Jesus!

Grace and Peace

~James